Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a print instruction for instructing an image forming apparatus to perform printing.
Description of the Related Art
A plurality of image forming apparatuses is used on a print production site where print materials such as fliers and reports are produced and tape bookbinding is performed, as in the case of in-house printing. There is a case where image forming apparatuses of a plurality of vendors exist together on the production site. When a workflow application is introduced into such a production site, it is desirable that a user can issue a print instruction to a plurality of image forming apparatuses via the workflow application. More specifically, it is desirable that the user can issue a print instruction to in-house and other companies' image forming apparatuses via one workflow application.
However, the user cannot issue a print instruction to other companies' image forming apparatuses via a workflow application because job ticket specifications of these image forming apparatuses are not disclosed. Each time printing is performed, the user may open a printer driver applicable to a transmission destination image forming apparatus, set print setting items, and issue a print instruction to the image forming apparatus. However, when there are many orders, it is not efficient to open a printer driver each time printing is performed. Further, a certain technique can automatically acquire a printer driver applicable to an image forming apparatus selected as a print data output destination and perform printing (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 8-161130).
However, the technique discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 8-161130 is effective only for print settings of which specifications are disclosed. Accordingly, default values of the printer driver remain unchanged for print settings of which specifications are not disclosed.